Friday, November 13, 2009

With the BBC announcing that it will be screening an adaptation of Martin Amis's novel, Money, next year, Tim Martin in The Telegraph considers the prospects for a screen version of book that has often been considered 'unadaptable'.

The novel is unlikely to be a wholesale failure as an adaptation. It's stuffed with good dialogue and the plot, though almost dementedly unclear at times, has a sound tragic skeleton of disappointment and betrayal. But it is a baffling choice for an adaptation, as so much depends on the book's textual form.

The adaptation will be written by Tom Butterworth and Chris Hurford (neither of whom are mentioned in the BBC press release).

Martin Amis's high media profile is evident from the fact that in The Guardian, Mark Lawson also considers the prospects for the new adaptation.

Filmed literature works best when the content of an old book chimes with the times and Money fits this dollar bill: a character caught in financial fantasy and learning that wealth can be a form of fiction feels apposite. More gloomily, though, the central plot of Money involves the terrible failure of a US-UK movie co-production. Perhaps I'll end up wishing they'd made another sodding Sensibility instead.

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